The Dark and the Dawn
by Ariel C. Rilmonn
Summary: After the death of Campbell Saunders, the people who were in his life respond in different ways. These are the mental responses of Zig, Dallas, Alli, Eli, and his beloved Maya. Death is hard. Dealing with what was left behind...that is even harder.
1. Zig

Prologue 

Death is easy. Death is the way out when there is nothing left.

No heartbeat left for your body. No brain left to think. No nerves left to feel.

Life happens, and then you die. It doesn't have to be a sad thing, in fact, the idea of death is peaceful, it's soothing.

When you want to die however, you welcome death too early then you're supposed to. You don't test life to see if it gets better, because at that point, you don't have the energy and you don't care. If life was so great, why wasn't it so great early on? Why does someone have to go through crap to get to the good stuff? When someone takes their life, they miss out on all the beauty in the world that they had been hoping would emerge sooner. They miss out on all the jealousy, the epiphanies, the lessons, the regrets, and the love that comes with the box of unhappiness. They don't get a chance to look past the surface.

If someone wants to live, they will do something so that they can.

Or you end your life. But what we don't realize is the sadness and tragedy that we leave behind in our wake. This is that tragedy.

* * *

Zig

It's my fault.

Maya says the person to blame is well, Cam, but I know whose fault it really is. He never was so bad. He was a great hockey player, he was nice enough, but nothing about him ever sat well with me. He was moody like, all the time, playing Maya hot and cold, and she didn't deserve that. She deserved someone a lot better then that, someone who could be there for her when she was feeling unhappy, not someone who would drag their unhappiness onto her.

I could be that person. I'm easy going, I'm happy most of the time, I'm…alive. I guess that's the only difference between Campbell and me now. I used to think we were polar opposites, but it doesn't matter really anymore how much I have in common with him. He's dead.

That's so weird to think. Grade 9 and someone has killed themselves. Jeez. What made him do it in the first place?

Oh yeah. Me. I did. I told him to get out of her life, so he did. In the most permanent way he knew how. I honestly didn't mean it like that! I didn't think he would…that-that wasn't going through my head when I told him he needed to go. I didn't mean like that.

Why didn't I like him again? Cause he got Maya when I wanted her? Because he was sort of weird? Heh. That crap is so insignificant now. So he was a little moody, did that really mean I wanted him out of her life forever? Did I...did I _want_ him dead?

...

No. I didn't. I didn't want him to die. If anything, I wanted him to live to see me eventually win Maya over. I wanted to rub it in his face! I wanted to be there when he realized that he hadn't won, that he might have the school drooling over him because he was an Ice Hound, but he didn't have the girl. Sounds pretty shallow. I guess when life ends so abruptly for someone, the people left behind start thinking about how they screwed up, and what would have happened if the person who died well...lived.

Once Maya realizes that all this is my fault, she'll hate me. Tori hates me already, Tristan hates me _because _Tori hates me, and now Maya is gonna join the most popular club in school: the "We Hate Zig club."

Life sucks, a lot of the time, but…is that really why he did it? He didn't think there was any way he could be happy with his life ever again? He really thought it was that hopeless? He had it all! Why did he throw it away? If I had his hockey talent, I would have been living it up everyday. I wouldn't take my eyes off the chance to be drafted into the NHL.

But the thing is, he didn't just leave the chance of being an NHL hockey player. He left friends, family, he left his _whole life._

So what happens now? What do the people he left behind do?

* * *

**A/N: This storyline was incredibly tragic. So I wrote a few little chapters about characters on the amazing Degrassi that I thought would have interesting, heartbreaking, and pretty usual responses to a suicide. There are of course so many ways people respond, so these are just a few. If you like it then great! If not...this is awkward. **

**Feel free to leave me a comment or a note! A few more POV coming soon! Thanks!  
**


	2. Dallas

Dallas

It's my fault.

The kid was sick, really sick, and I just made it worse. You don't tell a kid with cancer to suck it up and continue on with their lives as if nothing is wrong! You tell them to slow down and go to a freaking hospital! You help them fight; you don't encourage their suffering!

I didn't care. As long as we were winning, Cam was gonna play: that is what I cared about. Man, he acted like the Grade 11 and 12 kids knew what the hell we were doing. I should have told him that…we don't. Damn it Campbell, we are just as lost and confused as you were. I just…I could hide it better. I could put on that hockey gear and cover up the scared Mike I had been all my life. The gear protected me from hits on the ice, and off.

I knew he was hurting. I could see it. I try to listen to what the counselors are telling me, that its not my fault, but I know that's bullshit. If I had reached out to him, if I had helped instead of being an egotistical ass, I could have helped him. Of course now, he isn't around to get my help, even if he pleaded for it before.

"I don't want to play hockey anymore." I should have listened. I should have put my bullshit aside and just listened. I can't believe I didn't do anything. I'm older then he is-was, I should have been able to help.

Maybe everyone trying to make me feel better is right, I couldn't have helped him. I'm not a professional, but do I really need to be? No. Its crap if people say there is nothing you could have done. Because there was. I could have helped him. I guess I learned my lesson:

I can't help anyone.

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**A/N - Thank you to the few who are following this little story of mine. Its a different format then I'm used to writing, so it is a challenge for me! **

**Review to tell me what you liked/didn't like! Thanks!**


	3. Alli

Alli

It's my fault.

"_YOU DID NOTHING!" _Mike Dallas' words echo through my head day and night now. I can't focus on anything; MIT, school work, friends…all I can do now is think about how me screwing up this time lead to a kid dying.

Just the thought of someone ending their life. Because they were so unhappy is unthinkable. All those times I was tutoring him, I could have just asked him, how're you doing? Would that have been enough? How much talking would we have to do before he realized that he wasn't alone? If only the poor kid knew about all the drama I had been through as a niner and a grade 10. Maybe if I had gotten a chance to know him, not just tutor him, I could have told him that its hard, life is hard. But it gets better.

I'd had boy drama and pressure from school and family, I knew what it was like to have a potential you had to live up to. I knew. So why did I stay quiet?

"_I just want to go to sleep and never wake up." _That one sentence, that one sentence should have opened my eyes to a problem. All the brochures I've read, that is like the number _two_ warning sign. That sentence alone should have tipped me off. Instead I say: _"Everyone has bad days."_

I wish so much that his unhappiness was just another bad day.

I should have said something. I should have _done_ something.

But what do you do when someone is so broken? How do you help them heal?

* * *

**A/N - Alli's feelings I thought were great during this episode because they mirrored so much of how people would react to a suicide that they couldn't foresee. Overall I thought the writers really hit the nail on the head for this episode. Have being someone who has had this event happen in their lives, I could definitely relate to how all the characters were feeling. **

**Review if you have any comments! Thanks for reading!**


	4. Eli

Eli

It's my fault.

I didn't kill the kid, but I might as well have. I got there too late. I was worried about dumb crap like college and my girlfriend (not that she's dumb) instead of keeping my mind more open to people who were mentally ill. People like me.

If I had been a minute sooner, maybe I could have…

Ugh, my therapist told me that those kinds of thoughts are natural. I'm sorry but, how it that supposed to make me feel better? Good to know that these terrible thoughts are natural, but how do you make them go away!?

To know would be taking the easy way out I guess. I always gotta take the hard way for some reason.

The scariest part of that whole thing is, it could have been me. Last year, I was driving into a brick wall because my girlfriend wanted time apart. I was plagued with a mental illness, and if I hadn't gotten help, if my parents hadn't been there to make me see someone...the kid covered in blood, the one that everyone is mourning, that could have been me. I wonder who would have found my body if I died. Would I haunt them like Campbell is haunting me? Would that person think they were too late?

Seeing Campbell's body in that greenhouse, just…lying there…. it gives me the same icy feeling that I had when I got the call that Julia died.

I walked up to him – to his body – and hoped that he was just unconscious, or an accident happened, that his eyes would still be open and he would just be upset he cut his arm by accident. For once, I wanted a cocky smiling jock to be there. I didn't want that. I didn't want to see a kid dead.

Total body count in my life: 2.

Julia was my fault; she got on her bike when I had screamed at her. And now…and now because I was so busy worrying about trivial bullshit, another kid, another person who was loved, had died.

For the first time in my life, I'm hoping Clare is right about religion. I hope there is a heaven somewhere.

* * *

**A/N - I am super proud of this story, its different then what I've written before, and I am very happy with it. Second to last POV is next: Maya.  
**

**I wish the most recent Degrassi episode highlighted the dangers of MDMA (Molly) for kids with unstable chemical imbalances in their brain. Oh well, another plot for another time. **

**If you read, review please! **


	5. Maya

Maya

It's not my fault.

Everyone is going around blaming themselves, but I am the only one who knows the truth. It's not my fault. Or Zigs or Eli or Dallas or Alli or anyone.

The fault lies with the person who left us in his wake. Cam.

Call me cruel; call me insensitive, but its true. Cam did this. He dug himself into a hole he couldn't get out of. He decided that the best way to solve his problems was to end his own life. He left us behind.

_He left me behind._

Katie says he was sick. Really sick. Maybe that is true. He was so sick he didn't think he could be helped, he didn't think that we would be there for him if he decided that he needed some time to himself, to figure himself out, what he wants, who he wants to be with…

He left his family behind too. People are so busy telling me how sorry they are and how much they're there for me, but who is there for them?

His mom lost a son. His siblings lost a brother.

Who is going to "be there" for them when they are looking through family photos only to see their dead son smiling back at them? Who is going to comfort them when they realize that a chunk of their family is missing from the family picture because he decided to quit life?

No. Not hockey, not school, not friends. He quit life.

He left them to live on after he died. He left them alone. He left me alone

Why did he leave? Why did he do this? How did he decide that his life wasn't worth it anymore? We were there for him. He could have spoken up, he could have been helped. HE COULD HAVE BEEN HEALED! He should have fought.

I look at the video he left me on my phone sometimes, when I'm alone.

Katie can't see me looking at it, my parents can't see me looking at it, because they will just ask how _I_ am dealing with what happened, instead of the most important people in his life. Why does it matter how I feel about Cam's death? He made the choice. He left behind everyone to sob and mourn and deal with his death.

"It was the best night of my life…" he said. He was laughing. He was smiling. We could have had so many more nights together. We could have kissed more, and talked more, and felt more, and loved more.

Now he's not laughing. Or smiling. Now he's dead.

The cloud cleared away, and left the bod of the boy I loved. He was free. He was done.

But what do we do now? How do we move on after he leaves the ones he loves behind?

It's not my fault.

It's his. And I have never been so angry with someone in my entire life.

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**A/N: This was the hardest chapter to write. Only one more to go before I move on from this story.**

**Thank you for those who have read it and reviewed. It means so much to me. This is a very personal story and I think the emotions of those in the show are vital to their characters.**


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